“A person is not born for their own sake, but for  the  sake of others; that is, so that a person should not live for themselves alone, but for others. Otherwise no society could hold together, nor could there be any good in it.” (True Christian Religion 406)

“If you feel no yearnings to give the bread of life to the famishing, to open the prison doors of evil and falsity, and lift the burdens from the many, and let the oppressed go free; if you form no deliberate and solemn purpose to do what lies in you to dethrone the powers of evil and build up the Lord’s kingdom on earth, then you have no mercy in your hearts for suffering humanity.  Talk about truth and contend for doctrines as much as you please, there is no truth in your hearts. Mercy and truth have not met together in you, righteousness and peace have not kissed each other.

“Be ye therefore  merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” (Luke 6: 36)

(from Chauncey Giles, Heavenly Blessedness: The Blessedness of Mercy)

My first serious encounter with the explicit side of religious experience was the dreaded religion paper in the final year - 8th grade in those days - of elementary school.  Yet again laying groundwork for things to come, the experience of rational reflection stimulated by composing that paper drove home, albeit in only a preliminary way, the idea of religion being primarily a rational experience.  This idea was further reinforced by church and chapel experiences as well, all emphasizing that, no matter what your religious question, there was always a rational answer to it available and, by implication, that feelings and faith were second best to that rationality. 

On the decidedly non-rational side of things there was, in that final year of elementary school, the other new phenomenon - girls.  Most specifically, there were girls involved with that other dreaded ordeal, dancing class.  One of my male classmates even attempted to hide under a table to avoid taking part.  In retrospect, the angst of those classes seems almost poignant, a light year removed from the raw meat sexuality confronting today’s children.  But those classes were nonetheless, in their own small way, significant, again laying groundwork.  The groundwork in this case, however, was part of what I believe was the noblest undertaking of that church organization’s existence, the attempt to prepare us for the ideal of true marriage, that greatest joy of human life.  The allegiance to this ideal was not lightly held, as demonstrated a half century earlier in a sensational court trial where the church, in what was perhaps its finest hour, had bravely defended that ideal in the face of ugly attack.

And so on to high school, where the explicit side of religion took center stage, as we learned in lawyerlike fashion how to interpret the codes of correspondence and construct thought frameworks able to interpret any moral or spiritual situation.  Of great significance, in retrospect, was the strong orientation to the books, i.e. the 30 volumes of Swedenborg’s theological works.  Those other books, of the Bible, were typically only mentioned in support of, or to complement, a point made from the theological works.  The Source of both sets of books, Jesus Christ, was almost never mentioned at all. Primary allegiance was to “The Word,” or “The Writings,” i.e. to the books, not to a Person. (The logic behind use of the term “The Writings” is difficult to follow since, by definition, everything Swedenborg wrote on any subject is part of his writings.) Furthermore, what mention of Divinity was made was typically de-personalizing, using terms such as the Divine Love and Wisdom, the Divine Providence, the title “the Lord,” and the almost inscrutable abstraction of the “Divine Human,” which I can recall even clergymen saying they didn’t fully understand.

In high school the banner of  conjugial love was held high and driven home.  At the same time, perhaps predictably since the effects of the Victorian age were still pretty much in place in the 1950’s, the discussions of the subject were circumspect and theoretical.  Meaning, to a teenager in the midst of sexual fantasies or pregnancy or promiscuity, that that teaching appeared to fall far short when it was needed most. The end result for many young women, I have since learned, was feelings of worthlessness, despair and an “well, I’m going to hell anyway, it doesn’t matter now what I do, so I might as well have fun” outlook.  In other words, the sad and ironic end result of this ideal as here taught was too often to get kids deeper into its opposite.

And then to college. Here I learned for the first time what a potent debate weapon my Swedenborgian ideational structure could be.  In those late-night discussions with my dorm mates I found I could take on virtually any ethical or teleology issue and “win.”  I thus fell into thinking an echo of what I  had heard earlier in life, about our faith tradition being newer and better than the competition’s.  It did not occur to me that, in the bigger picture, I lost.  I had some subtle warnings, such as the fact that I “won” those discussions didn’t seem to attract anyone to my theology’s ideas.  And then there was the girlfriend who told me that I had too many answers.  But dominating one’s fellows is heady stuff for the male persuasion in that fiery time of life.  Having my own classical DJ show on the college radio station Sunday evenings added to that brew, as did an in-group experience in a student government election campaign that tangled with the college’s administration.  This was the ’60’s, after all.  It took the caustic commentaries from a sophisticated roommate to begin and, many years later, a very patient wife, to reverse course in this area and, regrettably, I still fall into this trap in too many cases.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After spending 5 years wandering across the curriculum in college, I finally graduated with a useless degree (”Arts & Letters”), but its limited prospects were bypassed by my being accepted into the Peace Corps for an educational television project in South America. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.  My peers in El Cuerpo de Paz (in the Spanish of the country we were in training for) felt, under JFK’s magic, that the world’s problems could in fact be solved and we could help.  For me what hit home was that this love of the neighbor stuff wasn’t just theology - it really felt great!

I was “unselected” - in plain English, kicked out - from the Peace Corp at the end of training, basically, I think, though I was never told in precise terms, because I was too brash.  That superiority demon coming out again.  I would have done well to reflect on the implications of that at the time, but was too busy going off to seek my fortune elsewhere in some neighbor-serving use.  With the help of a cousin’s boyfriend, I ended up squeaking into a part-time job as a social worker, working with “predelinquent” boys, in a settlement house in the lower east side of New York City.  I started thinking about going back to school for my MSW and doing this for real but, a few months later, it became clear that the US Army was interested in me, in a drafty kind of way, so I made an end run and enlisted myself.  After which I had the second great experience of my life, basic training. It was a fascinating and exhilarating experience to be part of a disparate group of guys welded into a common use, a unit, our platoon, based on pitching right in - with rough and ready feedback if you didn’t get with the program!  There was no issue here of somebody being better than somebody else.  If your platoon was going to work and pass its tests, everybody had to get together.  You passed as a unit or you didn’t pass. I still recall one overweight guy who just wasn’t making it around the track fast enough to qualify. So while the rest of us cheered and jeered, three guys from the platoon ran with him and all but pushed him around that track.  He qualified. 

After Basic I had a classic Army experience. I had been sent by my reserve unit to get trained in communications.  So, what else, I was sent to the motor pool.  If you ever need help changing a jeep oil filter at 2 AM (I was on the late shift), you know where to come.

After the Army my life spaced out.  After the intensity, direction and clear purpose of the Peace Corps and Army, nothing in the typical workaday menu open to me seemed very interesting or meaningful.  My dad wangled me a job with a company that installed cable TV systems.  Though nobody said anything, I knew the guys I worked with resented my being there under those circumstances, and I didn’t see spending the rest of my life threading cable through conduit.  It would have been a great opportunity to do some reflection on humility, but I never got further than a case of the blahs.  But Jesus took pity on me and caused lightning to strike.

We were down in Delaware working on a new statewide educational TV setup.  Their current studio setup was just 3 tractor-trailer trailers. I stopped at the end of one of them one day and fell into conversation with one of the system administrators working there.  In what turned out to be a life-changing discussion, he convinced me that educational TV was the career path of choice and offered to help me apply to the program he had gone to at Michigan State. That fall, a few months later, after just squeaking my way in (since my C undergrad average didn’t exactly impress) I hopped in my old VW beetle and pointed north and west to MSU’s grad school.  And no, it did not occur to me to thank God for giving me this opportunity. I hadn’t, after all, ever been taught to think of Him as a person you could thank, and it certainly didn’t occur to me spontaneously then.

I paid my way through MSU by writing manuals on pump operation for refinery employees.  More significantly, on the social side of things, I ran into a very attractive young lady and one thing led to another.  Basically, I pushed her around.  A lot.  We got engaged, since that was what one did when serious, or so I thought I had been taught. And as long as we had the external niceties, things like consideration, or even love, weren’t that big a deal, right?  It sounds pretty harsh to say it like that but when you take the window dressing off, that in fact is how harsh it is - and was.

At this point I was starting to get itchy.  Educational TV was interesting, but I started looking for something more fundamental, and fell into a fascination with the design of non-verbal communication, i.e. semiotics, and its possible application to allow educational material to reach a much larger group of people, notably in the Third World, than was possible when that material had to be translated into the myriad languages of this planet.  I then ran into a small book by a man at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education that looked like it was pertinent and I decided to apply to work under him to see if I could make my idea go.  With some more reading I realized that there were other people there, some of them famous, who also might have useful thoughts on all this.  So, with what looks in retrospect like just total brass, I went to visit Harvard and talked to some of them.  I don’t think I would have been as courteous as they all were if I had been in their shoes and this whippersnapper had come knocking all unannounced.  But go I did.  While there, at the critical moment of truth, as it turned out, Jesus reached down and helped me out yet again.  When I went to talk to the prof whose book was my original reason for coming, he was out of the country.  Only his secretary, or what looked like a secretary, was there.  This was where Jesus must have reached down once more since I was, with her, for once in my life, not brash but respectful. I discovered later that she was anything but just a secretary;  She was an administrator in the department, with a degree from Harvard herself.  Another visitor showed up at the same time on a similar mission to mine (was that timing an accident, or occasion for reflection?).  He was not respectful to her and was told goodbye in short order.  In my case, she began what turned out to be a momentous process by giving me the phone number of one of their program’s grad students who, she said, could tell me more about the program. ”Tell me more” turned out to be a considerable understatement.  The grad student didn’t just tell me about the department but gave me invaluable and patient advice on writing my application.  (I spent 2 weeks, 8 hours a day, writing and - with her help - rewriting, and then again rewriting just the personal statement.)

I was accepted, once again just squeaking by, to their program at a Master’s level.  Also once again, it never occurred to me to say thank you to the Man Who had arranged this.  So, come September, I bid my fiancé   good-by and drove that old Beetle, containing all my worldly possessions, 18 straight hours from East Lansing to Cambridge, Mass. 

That fall had a dark spot in the midst of all my new challenges.  In retrospect, I am sure my fiancé  must have long had reservations about our relationship, as well she might, but it did not really come out till I had been gone a while.  When she called me up with storm warnings I hopped the next plane and went out there unannounced.  I tried to push her around some more in the one time I saw her.  Then she simply disappeared, going to stay with a friend, her roommate later told me.  I never saw her again, but got in the mail a week later a package with the copy of the Word I had given her and her engagement ring.  But no note.  I have the impression, after later reflecting on another comment her roommate had made, that she did not have a happy ending, at least at that time.  While I see clearly  in retrospect that she and I really didn’t fit with each other, it has been a source of lingering regret that I didn’t know, hadn’t been taught, didn’t have any more of a clue about charity in handling this most important subject, of relating properly with women.  It was certainly primarily my fault, but things could have been very different if Marriage Love (sometimes titled Conjugial Love) had been shown to me as a practical manual and not just a theory.

My long search for what I wanted to do with my life continued through Harvard, first moving to an EdD program and finally to a PhD program at the regular grad school. To pay the rent, I went through several grad student type jobs until, Shazam!, I ran by accident (or was it?)  into a department in the Medical School that did research on kids’ eye problems.  I knew, at last, I had come home.  Not long after that, I met a winsome young woman at a Swedenborgian church camp and found home for real.  I proposed to her at Walden Pond on a lovely fall day and promised her we would never be rich but that she’d never be bored.  She’s been a wise and patient partner and blessing through four children and many twists in the road since.

My religious story was far from done, however.  I spent a good chunk of time in the next 40 years in writing for or editing Swedenborgian church publications, making me the most published layman in the history of my church a clergyman once told me.  My main topic was almost always evangelization.  For most of those years I never stopped to think about just what it was that I was trying to sell in that evangelization. Not that there was any lack of clues if I had stopped to look for them, most notably the remarkably tiny number of people that had ever been attracted to the Swedenborgian organizations despite a denominational history two centuries long.  But all that came to sudden sharp focus when our son, an ordained Swedenborgian clergyman, resigned not only his pastorate but his church membership.  At one of Pastor Rick Warren’s church growth seminars, he had had an epiphany and come to realize that he wasn’t really a part of the “Swedenborgian Church” or the “New Church - he was a part of the Christian church, the church of Jesus Christ, of which the teachings of the Second Coming were only the latest dispensation.  He resigned his office and membership when it became clear that the leadership and culture of the church organization he was trying to serve was not supportive of the only way he felt free to teach the full gospel of Jesus Christ.

As you might expect, watching our son go through this transformation was a stunning experience for his mother and  me.  Here was this idealistic kid we’d raised, who had won every award the church high school had to give and who had looked forward for years to theological school and then to his ministry. To put the icing on the cake we had had the delight of seeing his clerical career start up with what looked like a smashingly successful roar in his first pastorate.  Then, in a twinkling, it had all gone to pieces. Was he right?  How could I, in all those years, have missed a problem with my church on a scale that would warrant such a dramatic and, apparently, career-ending response?  I began to go back and look at the teachings involved from his new perspective.  To make a long story short, one question led to another and much of my thinking and assumptions about the organized “New Church”came down like a collapsing house of cards. For those interested, I’ve spelled out some of my thoughts on my websites, most notably at

How Important is a Relationship with Jesus?

Do We Need Church Organizations?

Which Books Of Swedenborg are Divinely Inspired?

Swedenborg and Spiritualism and Spiritism

(You can find some of our son’s thinking online at his Second Advent Christian site.)

I also went back and  re-read Marguerite Block’s seminal history of the Swedenborgian/New Church movement, The New Church in the New World (some sections of which are available online).  With my newly opened eyes, her account sounded like just more of the same endless theological wrangles and power struggles that have troubled the Christian church since its inception millenia ago. Wouldn’t you expect a church based on the full teachings of Jesus Christ, including those of His Second Coming, to be different, “all thing new” (Revelation 21: 5) and better?

Block’s book was published in 1932.  That not much has changed, however, is suggested in a recent talk by Frank Rose, an audio recording of which is available online. (Note the associated handout on the main page.)  I also found food for thought here in a recent pungent column on Church Politics in Relevant Magazine.

From my new perspective, I feel like a total dope for not seeing the issue here myself for all those years.  Why did I have to raise a son to adulthood and wait for him to complete all his training and experiences, and then tell me about them, before I could see the blatant truth here?  It seems so obvious now: I am not “Swedenborgian” - I do not worship Swedenborg or the books he wrote.  I worship Jesus Christ. For me this means that I am dedicated to developing a relationship with Jesus as a first priority and, following that, learning the teachings of His Word in all its dispensations, from Genesis to The True Christian Religion (see The Second Advent Christianâ Canon of Scripture). And, finally, instead of focusing on differences with other faith traditions, particularly with other Christians, I now try to find things we have in common, and build bridges of mutual charity.

“Suppose your assumptions about life are based on truth, such as that love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour are that on which the whole law hangs and about which all the prophets speak, and so are the essentials of all doctrine and worship.  With that assumptionthe mind [is] enlightened by countless things in the Word which would otherwise lie hidden within the obscurity of a false assumption. Indeed [if truth were the basic assumption, heresies would be dispelled and one Church would result from many, no matter how differing the doctrinal teachings and also religious practices might be flowing from that Church or leading into it.

“Such was the ancient Church, which extended through many kingdoms, namely, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Syria, Ethiopia, Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Philistia as far as Tyre and Sidon, and through the land of Canaan on both sides the Jordan. Among these peoples the doctrinal and ritual matters differed, but still the church was one, because to them charity was the essential thing. Then was there the Lord’s kingdom on earth as in the heavens, for such is heaven (see n. 684, 690). If the same situation existed now all would be governed by the Lord as though they were one person; for they would be like the members and organs of one body which, though dissimilar in form and function, still related to one heart on which every single thing, everywhere varied in form, depended. Everyone would then say of another, No matter what form his doctrine and his external worship take, this is my brother; I see that he worships the Lord and is a good man.”  (Arcana Coelestia 2385)

1.  He does not just tell us about that relationship’s importance as a teaching.  He gives it to us as one of the Commandments (Deuteronomy 6:5).

2. Within the Commandments, He gives this one top billing, as the very first Commandment (Deuteronomy 6:5).

3. He tells us explicitly that this is the greatest Commandment (Matthew 28: 38), that, to be truly and fully happy, you need to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).

4. He echoes this Commandment 13 more times in the Old and New Testaments:

Deuteronomy 11:1, 13, 22; 19: 9; 30: 16, 20
Joshua 22: 5, 23: 11
Psalm 31: 23; 116:1
Matt 22:37
Mark 12:30
Luke 10:27

5.  He provides further extensive information on this subject in the teachings of the Second Coming.  A smallcanonsearch.com search under “love to the Lord,” “love the Lord,” “loving the Lord,” “love God,” and “approach God” provides a total of 675 passages.  For instance, 

“…T]rue loveconsists in a person’s loving the Lord above all things, and their neighbor as theirself. (Arcana Coelestia 33).

“[T]he Word teaches nothing else than that everyone should live in charity with his neighbor, and love the Lord above all things. (Arcana Coelestia 1408).

“[T]he church is with those who love the Lord, and who love the neighbor as themselves.” Arcana Coelestia 1844).

6. There is a passage in the Second Coming teachings on this subject, Apocalypse Revealed 961, that apparently was of sufficient importance that it was copied verbatim in True Christian Religion 25 & 26.  What might be regarded as the punchline of these passages’ teaching is that

“if anyone does not approach the God of heaven and earth Himself, he cannot enter heaven, because it is that one God who makes heaven to be heaven, and that same God is Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah the Lord, the Creator from eternity, the Redeemer in time, and the Regenerator for eternity to come.”(Apocalypse Revealed 961, True Christian Religion 26, italics emphasis Swedenborg’s, boldface emphasis mine). 

For Further Reading

Knowing Jesus, Loving Jesus

1.  The Gospels say nothing about Mary riding on a donkey, nor that Jesus was either born at night or immediately after Joseph and Mary’s arrival in Bethlehem.  All the Gospels do tell us is that His birth took place “while they were there” (Luke 2:6).

2. Jesus was not born in a barn or cave but in the downstairs room of a house, since the upper or guest room (katavluma in the original Greek - Luke 22:7) was already occupied.  Animals were often kept in such downstairs rooms, with mangers to feed them. “By being inside, the animals were protected from the elements and theft. In addition, their presence provided body heat for cool nights, access to milk for the daily meal and dung as a critical fuel source.” (From Christiananswers website)

For a full review of all that was involved here, see the following links:

http://www.ancientsandals.com/articles/01_jesus_birth.htm

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a012.html

An interesting footnote to the Christmas story is that Jesus began his life on this earth downstairs because of lack of room in a katavluma. Then, just prior to the end of His life , He went “upstairs” to a katavluma at the Last Supper (the only other time that term is used in the Bible - Luke 22:11; Mark 14:14).

“…where there is an earth there is man; for man is the end for the sake of which an earth is, and nothing has been made by the Most High Creator without an end. That the end of creation is the human race, and from it a heaven, may be evident to anyone who thinks from reason. The angels also say that an earth cannot subsist without the human race, because the Divine provides all things on an earth for the sake of man.” (Arcana Coelestia 9237, cf. also 9441 and The Earths in the Universe)

“To what other purpose could so great a universe with so many constellations be intended? For the end of the creation of the universe is man, and that from man there may be an angelic heaven; but what would the human race, and from it an angelic heaven from one single earth, be for an Infinite Creator, for whom a thousand earths, yea ten thousand, would not suffice?” (The Earths in the Universe 126)

These teachings don’t just apply out in the universe; they also apply to the planets of our solar system, and to both our moon and moons of Jupiter and Saturn. (Arcana Coelestia 9232-9237, Earths in the Universe 111-112)

Not all of Swedenborg’s theological works appear to be Divinely inspired.  There is good reason to believe that only the works he published himself are so inspired. (For details, see Which of Swedenborg’s books are Divine revelation? ).  What is the case for the teachings on extraterrestrial life? They are not simply included in the inspired works but repeatedly and prominently so.  They first appear as interchapter sections in the seminal work of the Second Coming, The Arcana Coelestia. In fact, the final numbers at the end of that work, 10833-7, are on this subject.  Swedenborg then, not long after he finished publication of the Arcana,  republished almost all the extraterrestrial material in a separate book, The Earths in the Universe (retitled Worlds in Space and Life on Other Planets in more recent translations), and he refers to that material in other of his inspired works (Heaven and Hell 321, 192,  418, Married Love 532, 535, Doctrine of Life 0, Apocalypse Revealed 716, The Last Judgment 11, True Christian Religion 32, 846, 851), most extensively in Heaven and Hell 417.  Finally, he reports that the spirits from both Mercury and our moon have correspondential places in the “Greatest Person” organizational form of heaven (Arcana Coelestia 6696, 9236), which could not be the case if people had not first lived on those two places.

It has long been concluded from telescope observation that our moon does not support life as we know it, and that conclusion has been extended by data from the manned landings there. Unmanned probes to the other planets in our solar system and some of their moons have found a similar lack of life in any form. It is impossible for there to be a contradiction between the Divinely created physical operation of the universe, which is studied by science, and Divine revelation about the universe.  How then to explain the apparent inconsistency here? Since the teachings on extraterrestrial life are part of the Word of God, it means that any apparent inconsistencies are due to limitations in our understanding of revelation, of the observations of science, or of both.  The case is similar to that of belief in the Biblical miracles, which also appear to go contrary to what we know from science about the function of the universe.

A further question that might be raised here is why, in view of this perceived inconsistency, such a strong  emphasis is put on the extraterrestrial life teachings? Even common sense suggests that the intent is to draw attention, and that appears to be the case:

1. In a conversation, angels once asked Swedenborg, “What news from earth?” He replied, “This is new - the Lord has revealed things….surpassing in excellence those hitherto revealed since the beginning of the church!” And his list of things “surpassing in excellence” includes what is revealed about “the inhabitants of the planets and the earths in the universe.” (True Christian Religion 846, Married Love 532)

2. Swedenborg reports that Earths in the Universe was one of the “small works [that] were sent as a gift to all the bishops, and to many of the nobles or lords.” (Apocalypse Revealed 716) 

3. He also states that “the things which have thus far been shown concerning heaven and hell and the life after death [are] for those few who are in faith. That the rest, however, may be brought to something of acknowledgment, it has been granted that I should relate such things as delight and attract the man who is desirous of having knowledge; and which at present shall be about the earths in the universe.” (Arcana Coelestia 9439, Earths in the Universe 124)

4. Swedenborg was aware that our moon did not have an atmosphere like other planets. (Earths in the Universe 111, Arcana Coelestia 9235)  Nonetheless, he related the teachings about life there without explaining how that could be possible, a predictably controversial, attention-drawing step.[1]

Looked at more closely, the Arcana Coelestia 9439 statement suggests that the teachings on extraterrestrial life are directed particularly at helping those lacking in faith develop it.  On the face of it, that seems like precisely the wrong goal to choose since, superficially considered, the apparent conflicts with scientific data would appear more likely to cause doubt than belief in revelation.  However, as always, “My thoughts are completely different from yours,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.” (Isaiah 55: 8)  How, then, might these teachings contribute to development of faith?  Certainly one aspect is that they provide the reader much mind-widening thought on the big and fundamental question of God’s purpose in creating the universe, such as the statistics that there are hundreds of thousands of (inhabited) planets (Earths in the Universe 26), that the size of the heavens so far from our earth does not equal even a hundred-millionth part of heaven’s total capacity, and that heaven will never be filled. (Earths in the Universe 168, Heaven and Hell 419) 

“The things contained in the little work called The Earths in the Universe were revealed and shown to me for the end that it may be known that the Lord’s heaven is immense, and that it is wholly from the human race; also that our Lord is everywhere acknowledged as the God of heaven and earth.” (Heaven and Hell 417e)

What, then, of the science side of this issue?

1.To begin with, to provide some perspective, it seems worth recalling that there are as many challenges of interpretation of the findings of science as there are of the reports of revelation. Science is not some ultimate authority, but only the best construct its practitioners have managed to come up with to date in explaining physical reality.  It has difficulties, for instance, in explaining its own ultimate building blocks, such as magnetism, gravity and energy, or  where the material of the universe came from and what caused that coming.[2]  More directly to the point, there has been discussion of how life began in the first place, especially in view of  what appears to be the almost incomprehensibly tiny statistical likelihood that it would develop.[3] Finally, science  has also been confronted with the apparent inconsistency  between the second “law,” or principle, of thermodynamics, which says that things “run down” into a state of energy homogeneity, and the life process, which does just the reverse (i.e. negative entropy).[4]

2. There is a key difference between resolving the life on other planets science vs. revelation inconsistency and resolving the similar apparent conflict between the reports of the Biblical miracles and what we know from science about the mechanisms involved.  The miracles require a scientific explanation for events that did happen, while the extraterrestrial life issue is concerned with an event - finding evidence of other human habitation in extraterrestrial bodies of our solar system - that, from a scientific data point of view, apparently hasn’t happened.  The distinction is an important one because it means that the doubter of life outside of earth in our solar system must prove a negative, which can’t be done.  In the words of a famous quote that has been attributed to a variety of people, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Thus, the scientific doubter cannot say that there is no life outside of earth in our solar system’s planets or moons but only that there is, so far, a lack of data supporting the life “hypothesis.”

3. Science is not a fixed and monolithic entity. Its conclusions, its models of physical processes, are endlessly changing as new findings and models emerge.  Familiar historical examples are the change from the original incorrect ideas that the earth was flat and at the center of the universe. A more recent example involves what was the planet Pluto. Swedenborg’s revealed account of the solar system has been criticized for failing to mention the existence of the planets beyond Saturn, which were not known in his day.  Now, however, upon recent scientific reconsideration, it turns out that in the opinion of most experts Pluto does not fit the definition of a full planet after all, but is more accurately classified as a new type of “dwarf” planet[5] so that Swedenborg’s classification - i.e. leaving it off the list - was more accurate than originally thought.  And, though originally thought to be completely hostile to life, water, carbon dioxide ice, and hydrocarbons, all signs of possible life chemistry, have been found on Hyperion, one of the moons of Saturn, and ice and liquid water on Jupiter’s moon Europa.

A final example right here on earth of what was thought to be life-denying hostile conditions  is that tube worms and other life forms that have been found living in the extreme pressures of over a mile deep in the Pacific ocean, in the complete darkness and near-freezing temperatures found there, with warmth and food provided by volcanic-like vents producing water temperatures of 750 degrees Fahrenheit.  The worms live on iron sulfide precipitates. (see National Geographic articles)[6]

The point is that science continues its history of having its understanding, its “fact” of yesterday, change in the light of new findings into a different set of “facts” today, so that what today may be seen as an inconsistency between revealed and empirically discovered truth may tomorrow be seen as all part of the same plan.

4. Another pertinent aspect of scientific investigation is the opinion the scientific investigator holds of revelation.  There are two possible approaches that may be taken, termed by the teachings of the Second Coming the affirmative vs. negative principles (Arcana Coelestia 2568, 2588).  Under the affirmative principle approach, the goal is to be open to interpretations of scientific truth that confirm and support the teachings of revelation.  Under the negative principle the approach is to trust only the evidence of the senses - in this case in the form of scientific data - and disbelieve any aspect of spiritual reality that cannot be proven on that basis.  The availability of both approaches is yet another aspect of the spiritual free will that is all-important (True Christian Religion 480) to human mental and spiritual life.  The object in the case of the affirmative approach, it should be noted, is not to violate scientific objectivity with regard to determining “facts” within its physical reality field of view, but to attempt integration of those facts with understanding of the truths of revelation.

The estimable spirits from Jupiter had some sobering thoughts on this question:

“The inhabitants of the earth Jupiter place wisdom in thinking well and justly of all things that happen in life. Of sciences, such as are on our earth, they know nothing whatever, nor do they wish to know. They call them shadows and compare them to clouds which hide the sun. This idea concerning the sciences they have conceived from some spirits from our earth who boasted that they were wise from sciences. The spirits from our earth who thus boasted were such as defined wisdom as consisting in things having to do merely with the memory, as in languages, especially the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in  knowledge of the things related in the literary world, in criticism, in mere experiments, and in terms, particularly such as are philosophical, with other things of a like nature. They do not use such things as means leading to wisdom, but define wisdom as consisting in those things themselves. Such persons, because they have not cultivated their rational faculty by the sciences, as means leading to wisdom, have little perception in the other life; for they see only in terms, and from terms, in which case those things are as dust and clouds obstructing the intellectual sight, and they who have been proud of their learning therefrom have still less perception; but they who have used the sciences as means of invalidating and annihilating the things having to do with the church and faith have totally destroyed their intellectual faculty, and like owls they see in the thick darkness falsity for truth, and evil for good.

“The spirits of Jupiter, from the conversation they had with such people, concluded that sciences induce obscurity and blindness. But they were informed that on our earth the sciences are means of opening the intellectual sight, which sight is in the light of heaven; but because such things as relate to the mere natural and sensual life are given priority over spiritual matters, therefore the sciences to the men of our earth are means of becoming insane, namely, of confirming them as believers in mechanisms of nature rather than the Divine, and in favor of the world rather than heaven. They were further informed that the sciences in themselves are spiritual riches, and that they who possess them are like those who possess worldly riches, which in like manner are means of performing uses to your self, your neighbor, and your country, but also means of doing evil. Moreover, that the sciences are like garments, which serve for use and ornament, and also for pride, as with those who would be honored for these alone. The spirits of the earth Jupiter understood these things well; but they wondered that, being men, people should stop their thinking at means, and prefer things leading to wisdom over wisdom itself; and that they could not see that to immerse the mind in such things, and not to elevate the mind above them, was to becloud and blind it. (Earths in the Universe 62)

4. The teachings of the Second Coming tell us that some spirits of our earth have traveled widely in the spiritual world, and that some often accompanied Swedenborg during his discussions with the spirits he talked to from the various planets. A noteworthy feature of these experiences is Swedenborg’s repeated mention of how bad the spirits from our earth were, and how disliked by people from other planets.  The reasons ranged from the earth spirits confusing other spirits’ understanding of God to preaching false doctrine, injecting doubt, trying to convert other spirits, infesting and abusing them, and attempting dominion over them (Arcana Coelestia 10736, 10785, 10812, Earths in the Universe 64-66, 98, 99 ,102, 159, 162).  Our earth’s spirits, he says, were more interested in bodily and worldly things than spirits on other planets (Arcana Coelestia 6928) and, as well, “not affected with shame when they infest others.” (Arcana Coelestia 7764)

Thus, for instance,

“The spirits of [Jupiter] are utterly unwilling to be in fellowship with the spirits of our earth, because they differ in disposition and manners; for they say that the spirits of our earth are cunning, and are ingenious in plotting evils, and that they know and think little about what is good; also that they do not, as they do, acknowledge the one only Lord.” (Arcana Coelestia 8031)

Spirits from our earth would also represent a threat to the outlook of the inhabitants of Mars, where everyone is satisfied with what they have (Arcana Coelestia 7364) and where they don’t even know what hypocrisy is. (ibid., 7360)  In the case of Saturn,

…when any wish to lead astray the spirits of that earth, and draw them away from faith in the Lord, or from humility toward Him, and from uprightness of life, they say that they wish to die.…When they are asked why, they say that they would rather die than be led away from the Lord. Sometimes the spirits of our earth laugh at these things, and infest them with questionings why they do so.” (Arcana Coelestia 8950)

In some cases, spirits from other earths were protected against spirits from our earth (Arcana Coelestia 9282, 9283, Earths in the Universe 148) or lived in conditions which made people from our earth afraid to approach (Arcana Coelestia 10313).  Taken together, these teachings raise the question of whether our failure to find people on other planets might be due to some kind of Divinely-provided protection that has prevented us from contacting them and repeating the history of abuses on their lives and beliefs as has so often been done here on our rather corrupt planet.

6. Finally, an interesting footnote to Swedenborg’s reports is that he tells us that our planet is the only one in the universe to have science and technology.

“[T]here [are] sciences here [on earth] which are not elsewhere, as astronomy, geometry, mechanics, physics, chemistry, medicine, optics, philosophy: and also arts, which are not known elsewhere, as those of ship-building, of casting metals, of writing upon paper, and of printing what is written by types, and so of communicating it to others on the earth, and also of preserving it for posterity for thousands of years; as I told them had been done with the Word which is from the Lord; and therefore there is a permanent Revelation on our earth.” (Earths in the Universe 136)

On every other planet

“Divine truth is taught by word of mouth through spirits and angels. But this manifestation is confined within families; for the human race in most earths live arranged according to families; wherefore the Divine truth thus revealed through spirits and angels is not conveyed far beyond the limits of families, and unless a new revelation is constantly given, truth is either perverted or perishes.  It is otherwise on our earth, where the Divine truth, which is the Word, remains for ever in its integrity.” (Earths in the Universe 120)

This is explained by the fact that one of the main reasons that Jesus Christ was born on our planet, of all the planets in the universe, was because we had the “technology” of written and printed language, with which the Word could be written down and preserved for the ages (Arcana Coelestia 9350ff., Earths in the Universe 115-118).  From that reference source His teachings could be spread to the rest of the universe, by means of communication from those who learn of the Word in their life here on earth to all inhabitants of heaven. (Arcana Coelestia 9356)[7]

The implication of ours being the only planet with technology is that there will never be either the radio signals or spaceships of extraterrestrial origin that have long been looked for by those interested in this area.  However, there is what might be thought of as an enormous compensation:  Another long-held dream by those interested in the other planets of the universe is that some day a means will be discovered to travel the enormous distances required to reach even the nearest galaxies.  The “compensation” here is that those who get to heaven can, relatively easily, travel to meet the spirits from even the most distant planets in the universe. (Arcana Coelestia 9438)  This is possible because travel in the spiritual world is not done by spatial translation but resembles the “travel” in imagination in your mind; you just think about where you want your awareness to be and you’re there, only in this case it’s a “where”of spiritual state rather than physical space location (Arcana Coelestia 10734).

Footnotes

1. It might be noted, however, that other of his reports are in keeping with the scientific facts involved, such as moon people communicating by a “thundering.” (Arcana Coelestia 9235.)  That practice would appear to create a low-frequency vibration that could be communicated to others via conduction through the moon surface in the absence of atmosphere.  Another example is his description of the spirits from Jupiter as walking in a stooped posture and helping propel themselves with their hands (Earths in the Universe 55), as well as their having strong but small horses (Earths in the Universe 60), both of which facts would be consistent with Jupiter’s high gravity.

2. The “Big Bang” theory of the universe’s origin, for instance, proposes that the universe started out from a high-density mass of material but does not explain where that material came from.

3. See one attempted calculation.

4. See Wikipedia entry on this.

5. See 2006 definition of planet in Wikipedia.

6. It has, in fact, been proposed that this setting and chemistry was the origin of life on earth.

7. This is feasible since in heaven there is a single, universal language. (Arcana Coelestia 9356)

TRANSLATE THE WORD OF GOD INTO EVERY LIVING LANGUAGE ON EARTH

So, what will it take to accomplish this mission? As the director of this project I put together some conservative estimates, just to ballpark the baseline:

6,915 Living Languages On Earth
27 Volumes Of Original Text (Hebrew, Greek, And Neolatin)
$50,000 Per Volume For The Translator’s Time
$50,000 Per Volume For The Editor/Manage’s Time
$5,000 Per Volume For Book Design And Typesetting
$50,000 For A Print Run Of 1000 Books, Storage, And Distribution

That comes together as:

6,915 X 27 X ($50,000 + $50,000 + $5,000 + $50,000) = US$28,939,275,000

Now, because of the language knowledge requirements the number of employees is at least:

6,915 X (1 Translator + 1 Editor) = 13,830 employees

So, we’ll round this up to 14,000 to include leadership, operations, and business support. This means that if we figure in 30% on top of the salaries for employee benefits and a conservative 50% of project cost for overhead this project could be accomplished in 27 Years with a budget of:

(((14,000 * $50,000 * 27 * 30%) + $28,939,275,000)*50%) + $28,939,275,000 = US$46,243,912,500

So does that mean that this project needs well over Forty Billion Dollars in funding so that all six billion people on earth can read God’s Word? That’s a pretty steep sum. And what’s worse, this estimate only includes about seven million physical copies, which leaves each copy having to be shared by about 900 people. Not to mention that it will be a truly Herculean task to accomplish this mission on time and in budget, especially because all of these baseline values are pretty optimistic and actual cost, let alone worst case scenario, will be higher.

This is truly a BIG, HAIRY, AUDACIOUS GOAL!

The challenge facing the WikiWordOfGod (WWG) is that the hairiness of the costs could keep the size and audacity of the mission from being accomplished. However, in this information computing age there just must be a better, faster, lower cost solution — and there is.

The solution is human integrated technology. To cut costs and speed production, the WikiWordOfGod project is developing Translaborator™, a proprietary software package that facilitates collaborative translation projects by increasing the efficiency, consistency, and quality of the work done by human translators. Rather than trying to accomplish the near impossible task of machine translation, Translaborator™ leverages the expertise of human translators by providing:

• Trexmo™ - A reading and editing interface that easily integrates the work of many translators and empowers every translator with rapid and intuitive access to the complete body of information contributed by existing language tools and the input from other members of the translation community whether it is a private project with only a few translators or a public web application with thousands of contributors.
• Versamorph™ - Interactive language models and mapping algorithms that can be used to support a variety of translation models including literal, idiomatic, paraphrased, etc.
• LinearD™- Data mining tools that ensure textual consistency through the analysis of the work of individuals and communities within a translation model.
• Verbatrax™ - A dynamic information storage and retrieval engine that is personalized to the individual translator and integrated to support the evolution of publicly accessible tools like lexicons, grammars, etc.
• LateralText™ - A social network of translation professionals, linguists, students, hobbyists, and native speakers of living languages associated by language in combination with locations, dialects, and secondary languages.

Once Translaborator™ is released, the WikiWordOfGod project will launch a publicly available WIKI web application using Translaborator™ as its core to enable native speakers the world over to create free editions of the Word of God in each of the 6,915 languages used by real people every day. This free translation will be protected by a Creative Commons License that will allow it to be shared across international borders and be reproduced electronically or in print by anyone with the resources and inclination to spread the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, the one and only God.

So, how much money can we save? Well over Forty Billion Dollars! In order to develop Translaborator™ and launch and maintain the WikiWordOfGod, the Swedenborg Project, Inc. needs your financial support. Please consider The WikiWordOfGod Project and the Swedenborg Project in your annual charitable contributions and your tithe as we work to support the kingdom here on earth and its connection with the kingdom of heaven through God’s Word.

If you would like to give to the WikiWordOfGod Project, the development of Translaborator™, or the Swedenborg Project General Fund, please visit us online at http://www.swedenborgproject.org and click on Donate Now to set up your one-time or recurring credit card donation or send your check or money order payable to The Swedenborg Project, with WikiWordOfGod™, Translaborator™, or “General” in the memo line to:

The WikiWordOfGod Project
c/o The Swedenborg Project
P.O. BOX 9111
Lutherville, MD 21093

____

Article Republished from Big, Hairy, Audacious, Stephen Simons can be reached online at http://www.translaborator.com or by email to info@translaborator.com

The exact nature of each person’s use is a complex matter, involving all our many and endlessly changing thoughts, activities and interactions with other people, from the physical up through the social/psychological to the spiritual. For instance, a person at different moments may be in their role as a spouse, parent, voter, employee, friend, volunteer, discussion participant, customer, athlete and so on. The total combination of all such roles any one of us has defines not only the use we fill but the person we are.

Why is such importance attached to the use we perform? Because, we’re taught, usefulness is the fundamental basis of happiness.  This is no news to anyone who has worked hard toward a goal and achieved it, with the resulting good feelings that went with that achievement.  But the very best feelings arise from situations where what you have achieved serves someone else.

What about in Heaven?

A traditional idea about life in heaven comes from the statement in King James (and other) translations of the Bible that

“And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them” (Revelation 14: 13).

This statement appears to have been the origin of the idea that life in heaven is a matter of sitting around and resting, not doing much, if anything.  Some modern translations paint a more accurate picture as to what this teaching actually says:

“And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this down: Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from all their toils and trials; for their good deeds follow them!” (ibid., New Living Translation)

The teachings of the Second Coming underline this interpretation. “‘That they may rest,’ signifies that they will have peace in the Lord; by ˜peace” is meant rest of the soul when no longer infested as before by evils and falsities, thus by hell (Apocalypse Revealed  640).

“Eternal rest is not idleness, for from idleness come languor, torpidity, stupor and drowsiness of the mind and so of the whole body. These are death, not life, still less the eternal life in which are the angels of heaven. Eternal rest, therefore, is a rest which dispels them and makes a man live. Such rest can be nothing else than something which elevates the mind, and therefore some study and work whereby the mind is aroused, vivified and delighted, being thus affected according to the use from which, in which, and for which the work is done. Hence it is that the whole of heaven is regarded by the Lord as a containant of uses, and every angel is an angel according to his use. The delight of use carries him along as a favoring current carries a ship, and causes him to be in eternal peace and in the rest that belongs to peace. This is what is meant by eternal rest from labors” (Married Love 207: 7).

As an illustration, the teachings of the Second Coming describe an occasion Swedenborg saw in the spiritual world in which incoming good spirits were allowed to try out a full-time diet of whatever they thought would make them happy in heaven (Married Love 2 ff.). Some of the spirits chose partying all the time, others going to church all the time, others having heavy discussions all the time, others just sitting around taking it easy. All these spirits quickly discovered that they couldn’t stand a full-time diet of their choice. While each of those activities is part of the daily life of heaven, they are not the essence of heaven. Instead, the spirits learned the simple but profound truth that the secret of true happiness lies in being useful to other people.

What, exactly, do angels do all day? “[T]here are in heaven more functions and services and occupations than can be enumerated; while in the world there are few in comparison. (Heaven and Hell 393). Some of those uses are familiar to us, paralleling those in this world., such as  “ecclesiastical affairs, civil affairs, and domestic affairs” (Heaven and Hell 388), or that

“Some societies are employed in taking care of little children; others in teaching and training them as they grow up; others in teaching and training in like manner the boys and girls that have acquired a good disposition from their education in the world, and in consequence have come into heaven.”  (Heaven and Hell 391).

Others are unique to the spiritual world.  For instance,

“There are some societies that defend from infestations by evil spirits the newly arrived spirits that have just come from the world; there are some that attend upon spirits that are in the hells, and restrain them from tormenting each other beyond prescribed limits; and there are some that attend upon those who are being raised from the dead. In general, angels from each society are sent to people to watch over them and to lead them away from evil affections and consequent thoughts, and to inspire them with good affections so far as they will receive them in freedom; and by means of these they also direct the deeds or works of people by removing as far as possible evil intentions (ibid.).

In other words, the uses we can become involved in in the other world far surpass the options we have here.  But it is here we lay the foundations of thus being useful, so that, at the end, when we enter the life of heaven, our Master can welcome us: “Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!” (Matthew 25: 21)

For Further Reading

From the Books of the Second Coming

The True Christian Religion. Containing the Universal Theology of The New Church Foretold by the Lord in Daniel 7; 13, 14; and in Revelation 21; 1, 2 - particularly Chapter 7.  An overview of what usefully serving the neighbor is all about.

Back to Table of Contents

Two key spiritual teachings are needed to fully understand any kind of evolution process. One is that physical matter is in and of itself dead.  In other words, it can not evolve life on its own; it cannot even exist itself from moment to moment without inflowing power from God. More specifically, the level at which something exists, from sub-atomic particle to chemical, plant, animal or human, depends on the discrete degree level at which it is capable of receiving that inflowing power. In the present context, for instance, the significant difference between animal and human is that the human form is able to receive a higher level of that inflowing power than the animal form. (”Form” refers to functionality, not just shape.)

A second key teaching is that the essential difference between human beings and “higher” animals does not lie in a physical characteristic, such as brain size, or in some external ability, such as tool-using, that science can measure, but in the ability to understand spiritual truth and make moral and spiritual judgments based on it. In keeping with this distinction, for instance, only humans go to heaven or hell, as determined by the spiritual  direction of their accumulated judgments.

So, properly understood, there is no conflict between religion and science about evolution. Apparent evolution is simply one of many preparatory mechanisms in what began as a form only capable of receiving life at the animal level.  That form was then “evolved” by God - in keeping with the spiritual and physical laws of the universe - into a form capable of receiving influx at the human spiritual level, up a discrete degree from the physical level. Understanding the spiritual side of this development is important because, while the development of the external physical body may have been a gradual change, at the spiritual level there has to have been a discrete change.  In other words, there has to have been a change in the internal discrete degree level of existence (outlined in Correspondences: The Great Lost Secret) from sub-human to human.  Such a change could not be found by science, but can only known from revelation.

For Further Reading

From the Teachings of the Second Coming

Angelic Wisdom concerning The Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom - Teachings on the mechanics of spiritual and physical creation.

Other Titles

Chauncey Giles, Evolution  - Another of Giles’ brief but inspiring and thought-provoking reflections

to “Why am I here?  What is Life’s Purpose?

Back to Table of Contents

The temptation in this situation, and one which modern “scientific” people have often fallen prey to, is to elevate scientific discovery to the level of a sort of religion, while ignoring or openly scorning revealed truth. People are certainly in free will to do this. But to appreciate how false and limited such a view is, we only have to go out at night and look up at the vast majesty of a starry sky, or consider the incomprehensible endlessly regressing complexity of subatomic forces or of the human mind. Science at its farthest reach will never touch more than a fraction of complete understanding of even its own physical realm. Indeed, as science breaks into ever more fragmented hyper-specialized pieces, it may be, in classic reductionist fashion, getting further away from rather than closer to the overarching truths of the universe. But the point here is that we will understand even less if we do not take into account the larger spiritual laws that lie within and beyond physical reality. For physical reality is but a pale shadow of the far more real spiritual forces that make up creation in its fundamentals (see Correspondences: The Great Lost Secret).

Some glimpse of the issues involved here can be seen in the basic elements of physical reality - light, electricity, magnetism, gravity, and energy.  Scientific explanation of the physical universe is built out of these components, yet science cannot explain what they ultimately are. From what study has been made so far of the teachings of revelation on the matter, it is not clear whether these basic physical building blocks interface with the outer edge of spiritual reality or whether they are still fully within the natural realm. But they serve at the least as an example of the promise of coordinating the findings of science with the truth of revelation.  Because spiritual laws lie within and above physical laws, they explain reality far more comprehensively than physical laws. Furthermore, spiritual laws are provided by revelation from God, complete and correct. How different this is from the long and painstaking search science must make to discover even minor physical laws. And how often what appears to be a physical “law” to one generation of scientists turns out to have been only a part of the law, or an outright mistake, to the next generation. These are shifting sands indeed on which to build an understanding of the world when compared to the house of understanding built on the “rock” of Divinely revealed spiritual truth!

Does a scientist’s attitude toward religion influence his or her success in finding links between the spiritual and natural?  The truths of the Second Coming teach, with regard to thought about religious matters, that

“There are two basic attitudes of mind, the first leading to utter stupidity and insanity, the second to perfect intelligence and wisdom. The first occurs when someone denies everything, that is, says in his heart that he is unable to believe those things until he is convinced by things which he can grasp in his mind and perceive with his senses. This is an attitude which leads to utter stupidity and insanity and must be termed the negative attitude. The second occurs when someone regards affirmatively the things which comprise doctrine drawn from the Word, that is, when he thinks within himself and believes that those things are true because the Lord has spoken them. This is an attitude that leads to perfect intelligence and wisdom, and must be termed the affirmative attitude.”(Arcana Coelestia 2568: 4)

In other words, in the present context, the negative attitude approach is to doubt and challenge there being a spiritual reality or it having any connection to physical reality, while the positive attitude is to look for findings in science that confirm and support revealed spiritual truth. It seems fair to suggest that a scientist who looks only from the perspective of the negative attitude will find only continuing ambiguity and frustration concerning the essential truth about reality. For those who look no farther than these discoveries, reality must remain an unknowable riddle. But for those who will consider scientific fact in the light of the affirmative attitude, seeking to integrate spiritual revelation and natural scientific discovery, a whole new world of insight opens up. In comparison to the coming new science, built on the affirmative attitude, the achievements of the science we know today will be as a crawling infant is to a running adult, for under the new science people will no longer study just the physical sand particles on our shore of creation, but reality’s whole ocean. As noted in Correspondences: The Great Lost Secret, this new approach may be the key to science’s long-sought “theory of everything.”

For Further Reading

Pertinent books of the Second Coming

Angelic Wisdom concerning The Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom  - Teachings on the mechanics of spiritual and physical creation.

To Chapter 10a: Evolution

Back to Table of Contents

(Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1)

When we die, we don’t leave and go somewhere else because our mind and spirit - the real us - is in the spiritual world already.  That world is all around us even though we are not conscious of it. For now, our body drives around in this physical world like a person drives a car. However, our body is not our mind or spirit - is not us - any more than a car is its driver. Our mind can look out at the physical world through the body’s senses, but our mind is never a part of that world. Our mind and spirit live in the spiritual world, which is a discrete degree above physical existence.

To help understand how different the world of the mind and spirit is from the world of the body, think of how free the world of our mind is from the rules of time and space that limit our body. In our mind, we can travel instantaneously in our imagination to anywhere, in this world or far beyond it. In memory we can travel back in time to our childhood, or venture far into the future. We can think of things too small for our eye to see or things as big as the universe. We can even think of abstract things like truth and love that exist only in our mind and can’t be detected by our body’s senses at all.

Once we come to see that our mind and spirit are different from our body even while they “drive around” in the physical world, death is quite simple to understand, and not at all frightening. For all that death involves is a simple transition, in which our spirit becomes directly aware of the realm in which it has lived all along. Instead of looking out through the dim and limited senses of a physical body into the physical world, our spirit can then look out from the senses of our spiritual body into the wide and beautiful expanses of its own world, a world surpassing the physical world in every respect. And, far from being the sort of ghostlike experience that people often associate with the word “spirit,” life in the spiritual world is far more real and vivid than life here.

The death transition itself is a beautiful and peaceful experience, closely guarded by high angels and conducted with the utmost gentleness, however abrupt or painful the beginning of the process may be for the body.  Indeed,

“For…some days after death [a person is]… totally unaware that he or she is no longer living in the same world as formerly. The time that has passed is like a sleep, and when anyone wakes from it, they feel they are exactly where they were” (True Christian Religion 160).

So similar to the natural world does the spiritual world look when we first wake up there that some people do not believe they have died and have to be convinced!  There follows a very happy time as we meet friends and family who have gone on before and, if our spouse has gone on before us, we have a reunion with him or her.

Where we first awake after death is neither Heaven nor Hell but a place intermediate between these two known as the World of Spirits. That world serves as a sort of reception center. It is there that we initially adjust to spiritual existence and then go through the discovery process that spiritually clarifies what kind of person we really are, good or evil. This clarification takes place over a period of time and is based on the fundamental fact of the spiritual world that we can no longer hide anything about our moral and spiritual character from anybody, including, especially, ourselves.

“Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, beware of their hypocrisy. The time is coming when everything will be revealed; all that is secret will be made public. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear” (Luke 12: 2, 3).

Angels can tell the most minute details of our character simply by looking at our face.

As our real person emerges during this transition period, we change in appearance in accordance with what our true motives are, so that those motives appear as they really are - a change that may make us unrecognizable to those who did not know us well before.  This change is part of the main business at hand, which is to make final preparations for going to Heaven or Hell. 

Once we are in the spiritual world, our free will is finished. “In the place where the tree falls, there it shall lie” (Ecclesiastes 11: 3).  We have decided by the way we lived our life in the physical world who we are, morally and spiritually speaking, and this can no longer be changed. But since no one is all good or all bad, even a fundamentally good person typically has some evil traits left and those on the way to hell may have some good qualities.  This inconsistency, in the nothing-hidden setting of the spiritual world, is painful.  So the next step in the process is to have those inconsistencies in effect put to sleep so that we mercifully are no longer troubled by thoughts and feelings contrary to our main spiritual inclination.  If we are going to heaven, we are also taught any basic spiritual truths we didn’t have a chance to learn in the physical world so we will feel comfortable as we enter heaven.  This process is what Jesus was referring to, correspondentially, in the parable of the talents, when He taught that

“To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who are unfaithful, even what little they have will be taken away” (Matthew 25: 29, 30).

An interesting side-note is that, when we look back over our life as we go through our preparation for going to Heaven or Hell, we may not be able to - or may not want to - remember or acknowledge something about our life that is needed to help our spiritual self-discovery.  In that case, the angels helping us sort things out can play back  a mental recording of any part of our life.  This is possible since every smallest thing that we think or experience while we’re in the physical world, including things we weren’t even directly aware of at the time, is recorded in what is known as a person’s “interior memory.” The playback of that memory is similar to the experience of their life flashing before a person’s eyes that some people who have come close to death report, but much more detailed.  This playback is another aspect of the teaching in Luke 12 quoted above, about “when everything will be revealed.” There are no secrets in the spiritual world!

As many a love story has dreamed, those in true marriage love, with its fundamental orientation toward lasting till eternity,

“are not separated by the death of the one, since the spirit of the deceased partner dwells continually with the spirit of the one not yet deceased, and this until the death of the latter, when they meet again and reunite and love each other more tenderly than before.” (Married Love 321)

When we are finished the preparation process in the World of Spirits, we set off on a path that will take us to our final home in Heaven or Hell.  The important point here is that there is no judgment chair, no fierce judgmental God, just each of us finishing the destiny that we chose - in free will -  by our life in the external physical world. In other words, there is no punishment for past deeds involved in this process.  Jesus is ever-merciful and ready to forgive us for any evil we may have committed, however horrendous, if we truly want to do better. There is also, by the same logic, no reward for past good deeds. We go to Heaven or Hell, not for what we did in the past, but for what we want to keep doing right then and into the future forever.

It may seem hard to accept that people spend eternity in Hell. However, as pointed out in The First Coming of Jesus Christ, if there is to be meaningful spiritual free will, there has to be a real option to choose evil, right now and into eternity.  If God were to force evil people to go to Heaven, He would rob them of their choice and either make them more far more miserable than they were in Hell - since being in Heaven is very painful for evil spirits - or outright destroy the personality they’ve freely chosen.

Finally, on a more cheerful note, if we have chosen to love the good and the true, we wend our way up the path into Heaven, where we will seek and find a society of people with whom we feel in harmony beyond any friendship we have known before.  Those people are in effect our spiritual relatives, but with that relationship based on a free will-chosen commonality of outlook, not an accident of birth.  In that society they will find a home that we immediately recognize as ours since it perfectly fits us, and there we will live forever.  As Jesus promised,

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2, 3).

For Further Reading

Pertinent books of the Second Coming

Arcana Coelestia. The heavenly arcana contained in the Holy Scripture or Word of the Lord unfolded, beginning with the book of Genesis together with wonderful things seen in the World of Spirits and in the heaven of angels - Contains many teachings about life after death, interspersed with many other topics.

Heaven and its Wonders and Hell From Things Heard and Seen  - Largely drawn from the Arcana, with the teachings in more compact form.

Other Titles

C. Giles.  The Nature of  Spirit and Man as a Spiritual Being – another of Giles’ uplifting and carefully thought-out reviews, this time on what spiritual reality is like.

To Chapter 10:  Religion and Science: No Contradiction

Back to Table of Contents